In recent years, portable, battery-powered, notebook personal computers has been widely used. Many such computers are equipped with a hard disc drive (HDD) and an optical disc drive (ODD) as storage devices.
In this type of computer developed and manufactured on the assumption that the computer is used on the move or outside the house, that is, the computer is powered by battery, possible continuous operating time is very important in running the computer with the battery. Therefore, this type of computer includes various power-saving functions.
For example, one proposed mechanism is capable of intentionally disconnecting various devices, including an optical disc drive, from the system configuration of a computer by a simple operation on the computer without physically disconnecting the various devices from the computer. The user of a computer with this mechanism can bring various devices, including an optical disc drive, into a power supply off state as needed.
Here, for example, suppose, when an optical disc drive is in the power supply off state, the user tries to use an application program that uses the optical disc drive. In this case, the user operates to cause the optical disc drive to return to a power supply on state before activating the application program.
However, it is likely that the user will forget bringing the optical disc drive into the power supply off state. It is undesirable to cause the user to determine whether the application program needs an optical disc drive each time the application program is activated.